Puma Energy El Salvador Headquarter

Overlooking the road
Puma Energy Corporate Headquarter is located on the Panamerican highway, passing through San Salvador. The new building, which is inserted between the existing commercial and industrial buildings that characterize this stretch of road with barely public profile, overlooks the road with a powerful cantilever taking part of the intensity of the traffic, showing its interior activity and acting as an innovative element of the urban landscape. The building consists of two superimposed and arranged crosswise blocks, interlacing solids and voids all around them. Thus, a progressive sequence of compressions and expansions arranges and qualifies the circulation and access areas.

Sequence of sclaes
From the street, it is possible to access the plot through the interior street, and through the front gardens, and then to an entrance hall. This area of spatial compression acts by adjusting the scale to the user one, in such a way that the entrance to the building occurs through a more secluded area. The part in the back of the plot is dedicated to the parking area which is located between the pillars and screens of the building. This space, far from being a residual area of the project, takes on special relevance since it is strongly characterised by the expressive structure that covers it and the green areas that surround it.

Inner and outer relations
Continuous and transparent areas are planned thanks to the concentration of horizontal seismic forces in a few massive walls. Two different kinds of relations with the surrounding have been distinguished. On one hand the lower block defines a space that establishes punctual relations with the exterior and it is defined by walls with buttresses that support the roof slab. This configuration allows having continuous linear skylights parallel to the walls between buttresses, where the light enters. At this level, the accesses and the programme for external visits are resolved.

A vertical void connects both blocks at their intersection allowing visual relations between different levels and programs. Here, the light is vertical and comes from skylights on deck in contrast to the horizontal spatiality of the open office area located in the upper level.

The upper block houses the offices and collective uses. Structurally, this block is resolved by two parallel longitudinal gantries that make up two overhangs on opposite ends, and perpendicular beams to the same. This piece emphasize the horizontality and is connected to the horizon through a screen of steel sunshades which also act as inverted curtain wall supports.

Terrace towards the greenery. Balcony towards the volcano
The sunshades are homogenous throughout the longitudinal façades facing east and west. These mullions are thick and dense to avoid the horizontal sunlight of the first and last hours of the day. To the south the screen made of sunshades disappears and the glazed enclosure is recessed from the concrete structure border generating an outdoor terrace related to the greenery, while to the north, the glazed enclosure exceeds the limits of the concrete, and a vantage is projected over the road offering views of the volcano of the city.

Ruiz Pardo – Nebreda